finding the sacred in all the things I love

Springtime Energy and New Ideas

Hey, it’s another meta post that might very well only be interesting to me. I’ll do it anyway just to keep track of my ideas and maybe help with planning later. So just to be clear, this is up for me and I’m putting exactly 0 effort into making it audience-friendly, though feel free to read if you want to see what’s going on in my head lately and what I’m working on for the videos I do.

I didn’t do my video for February. Coming up with a topic was hard, and the few I considered just didn’t really seem to fit. I think part of it is my energy levels changing with the seasons, and part of it might be trying to re-format it to something I’m more willing to share publicly.

My sleep cycle has been all over the place in the last few weeks. I’m a night shifter, so daylight should be sleep time. But lately that doesn’t work. I want to be up and doing things in the day, which means I’m exhausted at night. And during the day, usually, because I try to stay awake at night and get back on the right schedule. Very frustrating.

I’m trying to get a daytime job, but it’s slower-going than I’d like, partly becauese of the lack of sleep and resulting lack of energy. But in the meantime, I finally realized it’s because of the warmer weather and brighter days. So maybe I just have to get used to not getting a whole lot of sleep for awhile, or else find a way to flip back and forth on weekends to take advantage of all the light. I think it makes me happier and more productive in general.

That’s probably also why I’ve been doing so many more posts here lately. The once-a-week guideline I set for myself and the long list of prompts I have helped me keep going during the winter months, but now I feel like I have a lot more to say and want to share a lot. So from now on I should probably take advantage of all the springtime momentum and use this time to get new things started, make changes, etc.

The video posts I make have been on my mind a lot. They’re not what I want them to be and I’ve kept doing them just to get the practice but haven’t wanted to share them more widely. So I’m thinking about…well, some of the things I’ve already said in previous posts but how that applies to the videos. I think I have a new format in mind, at least something to try.

Three segments, aiming for about 5 minutes each for a total length of 13-20 minutes. First would be reflection on a topic, followed by a recommendation for exploring it with kids. A children’s book or a relevant movie or something. Third would either be the same for grown-ups or just something from that month that caught my attention and inspired theological reflection. The first topic is “belonging.”

I’m not really sure that needs to be a video and I wonder if it would be easier on people (file size, convenience listening) to just do a podcast. But part of the video posts is getting comfortable speaking to people, which is more easily replicated with a camera than a microphone. I actually have to look at something and know it’s “seeing” my face too. Also I tend to find one-person podcasts boring whereas at least this way there’s hand motions and interesting decorations in the background. (Well, I find them interesting at any rate.) So probably the video will stay, unless I find someone else who finds that kind of podcast interesting and wants to join me. Then I would probably still do videos, just not so many and not so long and I’m not quite sure what they’d be about (probably whatever doesn’t get covered in the podcast, or just comic reviews).

Rambling over. Up next: another review, language and allyship, *maybe* tax season thoughts and getting through things that make me super-anxious. And then, video! Yay.